Equality versus Entropy

Posted on 2017.10.10 at 23:39

Severely ill again today. I pay the consequences of ANYthing my body does - whether it is walking, thinking, solar activity, sex, computer screens, light, electricity, pollution/fragrances, anxiety/stress, sorrow, eating, people in general, etc. Everything harms me. I fall ill a day or two after anything beyond my "energy-envelope" - OR - every little thing together in accumulation. Muscle use is bad, of course, which is part of the definition of CFS. But what can be even worse for me, though, is any change in my spine, or related bones. Ain't that the weirdest thing?! So, after this latest correction of my ribs, my spine has been really at it, readjusting. The unfortunate consequence of this is that it has been hell for my CFS. So, now you know one more thing!

So - here's the spine of this sad little post... Before I took out my dog today, I was listening to some NPR programme talking about menstruation liberation. Actually, this is a valid subject, where half the population is seeking fairness, considering the handicaps put on them by the monthly menstruation poltergeists, such as taxes for tampons, and all that. As I was leaving to take the dog out, I heard the announcer say, "When we come back: How this movement is being expanded to include transgendered people..."

And, I'm like, "What? What does that mean?!" I never did find out. Anybody know?

I recently saw a comic/ad promoting trans girls as girlfriends, and one of the points was, "We don't get periods..."

I do know that, even while violence increases against transgendered people, they are being locked out of the military, and any remaining tg service members will no longer be allowed to have ts surgery or related health care on the dime of the US taxpayer, damn it. Well, here's the thing you should know: The cost per every service person, for ts health care, is only $700. The cost to replace and retrain every tg/ts service person lost, per every service person? $75,000. Some people just don't think with their heads.

These days, all around the world, we are getting demands for social, political and economic equalisation, even while things are getting better for some, and worse for others. Right or wrong, this trend indicates devolution into a language of antipathy, negation or oppositionalism. The sum total is that society in general ends up going around in circles, in a limbic-system type of short-circuit. As the general pie gets smaller, words get bigger and turn to fatuous rhetoric, burying legitimate grievances. Groups congeal, against groups. Violent incidents occur, and the state eventually deems war necessary.

We think that equalisation tends to be a good thing, out of ideals and instincts for social justice. But we usually fail to see is that, as we move for equality, nature moves against us, demanding its own conditions. Fore example, a population may become wealthier, freerer, and so more populous, but end up depleting resources, and then experiencing a crash and famine. One of nature's demands wielded against our rising towards egality and independence, is the culling of the herd, out of a need to adapt to the herd's finite, cruel environment. And, an associated dynamic is the hierarchicalisation of power within the herd. Both of these, and entropy, are behind the world's perpetual inequality between the haves and the have nots. It turns out, ironically, that in times when groups rise up to demand more equality, wealth and capital inequality rises up even more - seeking to re-equalise imbalance. I.e., seeking to put the whole mass of poor back in their relative place, even when separate groups amongst it may think they are gaining rights. The sum total, in times of distress, is that all lose, but the wealthy lose far less that they relatively win.

The wealthy

So, there is a darker side of equalisation that we generally don't see. It is like pulling water out of a whole on the beach - the water keeps coming back in. It is like the boulder Sisyphus never pushes up that infinite hill. It is like Zeno's arrow, going nowhere. The only consolation is that some groups do indeed push ahead, although others fall behind far more.

The elite and their minions and institutions, being a part of a greater machine, use technology, interconnections, corruption, technology and speed to keep their control over all other groups. Many people like to assume that conspiracies do not exist, just like people like the Nevada shooter could not possibly exist, and so their could not be such a thing as the perverted elite control what news you and I see on TV, etc.

But just look at one serial rapist - Bill Clinton, I mean Bill Cosby, I mean Harvey Weinstein... This powerful jerk manipulated the news cycle, as one of the ways to keep his crimes hidden. This is just one person - ONE PERSON. The top .1% - I mean 1% - I mean 5% - have CEOs interlocking in corporate boards across the globe, and they know exactly what they're doing. Thinking differently to you and me, their tools, they believe that any equalisation or power to lesser groups and individuals means a draining away of their capital. So, instead, they forever drain profit upwards, while encouraging group to foist the expenses upon each other.

Because there is always a squeeze being put on the lower classes, including other species and the environment, and because there is forever a bottoming away of profit at these levels, concentrated capital has the ability to increase itself at a relatively geometric rate. But, since the entire pie eventually gets smaller, then fewer elites hare in the capital, even though it balloons and balloons. Ironically, it must be understood that capital is not so much derived from diverse profit or good, but is instead derived by the constraints put upon everyone else in catching up to the degree of wealth attained by those at the top. It is just like hubris being an indication of something BAD, not good.

Pull a small tree from the ground, and hang it on a hook, with its ball of dirt still surrounding the roots. The tree continues to grow, but the dirt falls away, more and more. The rain begins to trickle down, and the dirt is washed away even more. Some roots begin to die, and the branches at the top continue to espouse the benefits of "supply-side," but they begin to die, too. Only a few branches near the center continue to grow, strangling the whole. Unless something changes, then there will be disease or complete collapse. As labour is the source of capital, so is our social and organic environment the source of labour. To focus more and more on top-down capital and control is to deliberately destroy the planet.

But, the dark side of equalisation is not just this, i.e., the fact that wealth inequality always pushes back harder, demanding it's own conditions, expanding privilege and capital. It is also that equalisation is an ideal based on the ultimately ephemeral successes of industrialisation and technology. Without technology, we would not have gained the quasi-egalitarian profligacy of the 1950's. Technological productivity, however, cannot forever increase at an accelerating rate - when infrastructure, resources, demographics, rust, and other consequences, impinge upon success The more the middle class gains, people and environments in other countries must fall behind.

New technology has mainly needed centralised capital in order to proliferate and benefit society. That is true from the development of terrestrial oil, to the revolution of rock & roll, with its amplified guitars, mass radio and record production. because of corpocratic inertia, we do not yet have enough capital going into solar energy. But the point is that the only way to accelerate away from entropy is to tap into (the falsity of) capital. But, how rich has smart phones made you, compared to people like Bill gates?

Every time there is a new bubble in technology, there are people who make far more capital than those who are lucky enough to use that technology. Some things may be changed, some groups may rise a little, but many more will fall - like brick & mortar stores. Meanwhile, the population increases, and other factors put the squeeze on the non-so-rich, and the disparity of wealth only increases.

So, will technology save us, and eventually makes us all equal? We'll, even if we remain mindful of population increase and resource loss, and global warming, what we always fail to factor in are things like sudden mass endemics, hurricanes, stock market crashes, solar EMPs, nuclear wars, droughts, etc. In other words, even with our supercomputers, and genetic alterations, etc., there is nothing to say that we will not soon enough fall behind, short of our mark, and then become swamped by decline, just like lost civilisations of the past. Look at the situation now, as a starting point. Something like 100 families owns as much wealth as, like, 90% of the global population. No. That's a perpetually lopsided equation, destined for doom. It is forever more lopsided, always leaving us at square one.

We're on a deadly treadmill, and it's not going to stop. As a progressive, I do believe in science and technology. But the system we have now is so top-heavy, it's like feeding an addict's self-destruction. Look at what our activity has amounted to, other than 7.5 billion mouths to feed, trampling over the terrain: we have extracted things which spring from below the ground, transformed them into furniture and cars and crumbling buildings, all basically just sitting there doing nothing, except bringing a gleam to the eyes of a lot of self-deluded primates, convincing them that they are better than anyone because of their wealth, and so shall go to heaven, or at least have the right to have other primates destroyed.

Just a lot of useless junk piled over the landscape, when there could have been a diversity of LIFE every which way - the life which is essential to our souls and physiology. Instead, we eat cellphone microwaves, like we're cooking ourselves to death. Which we are. I haven't even mentioned the massive unpredictable power of global warming! The most obvious sign of entropic drag to our industry imaginable!

And we esteem ourselves in fighting over garbage.

People and their endless stuff. That's the sum total. The people die, and so the stuff gets moved around so that MORE stuff can be made.

What is your value if stuff is your achievement?

"A rising tide lifts all boats." It also lifts away the shanty towns and homeless. It unmoor's the poor fishermen's trawls. It floods the coastline, coming in with a hurricane, causing destruction in the billions. And, in the aftermath, we pump in more money and oil.

You want to be as well off as the white boy CEOs? Not going to happen. How about the professionals in the suburbs? It's a long-shot. How about - yeah - just give me a mobile home like the rednecks in the boondocks. That's not happening for me. Why can't "black lives" matter exactly like "white lives"? Why can't women have pay, the pill, and menstrual rights, so they can be, "men in skirts, basically," - (an actual quote)? Why can't men be saddled with heavy, protruding wombs, and children be allowed to fly helicopters? You see, of course, equality is, in itself, absurd, when taken to extreme - betraying the ultimate problem of trying to conquer entropy at all costs: Call it the Butterfly Effect squared.

Nevertheless, let's imagine that everyone in America could achieve some accepted definition of equality, i.e., wealth and happiness. Imagine that this never had to be accomplished by one group taking privilege away from another group, and nothing was gained at the expense of anyone else. because, isn't that the problem, with conservatives mainly? They see everything as a zero-sum gain/game - meaning it's either me, or you, it can't be both. Let's just imagine that we did it all and there never had to be any zero-sum gain, because our country was just so wonderful wealthy and progressive, it all could be afforded, right?

Well, we had something comparable to that, roughly speaking. And how did we do it? By waging war on the Middle East. By extending skewed terms of trade on Latin America. By investing our capital in corporations that extracted the resources out of countries. By controlling world industry through the petro-dollar. And so forth. Mind you, we tried good things too - and we could have done worse. But the fact is this:

Zero Sum gain always lurks in the shadows, in Communist countries, in pollution costs, in inflation, in disappearing ecosystems, in melting glaciers, in forest fires, in disease, in food shortages, in rising populations and poverty. Only by ignoring these things did we allow our industry and technology makes us feel all free and equal - while the rest of the world lost any hope of equality to us.

Actually, the real picture is this: There is the dwindling elite, who get richer and richer. They could be living here, or in China, or anywhere. But THEY are the ones who feel all free and equal, believing that there is no such thing as zero sum gain, just like they believe in "free trade" and "trickle-down." They have profitted from the industry that our ancestors built for them, which has since been turned into liquid capital, which they pour like wine.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world has fallen into wealth INEQUALITY.

Meanwhile, the PLANET has been made their stupid bitch.

Meanwhile, instead of pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps dutifully, we FIGHT AMONGST OURSELVES.

Don't you see? Our fighting amongst ourselves is the very thing that keeps them free and equal, and ourselves more and more disequal, futureless and spiritually enslaved?! As I said, capital is built on destruction. "It's the rhetoric of failure..."

The destruction of labour - of will - of habitat!

Unfortunately, with our accelerating industry, (and technology), we have made it possible to eliminate human slavery. But it's coming back.

It's coming back.

I have this question for you to ponder, until I come back for it in a future post: What becomes of us when robots decide? What happens when merchants and governments no longer look to our free choice - in shopping and voting - but instead let artificial intelligence dictate our will? If I cannot choose to shop downtown, or at Walmart, etc., but am only able to buy what Amazon tells me to buy, at prices now rising so high that I can no longer afford them, why am I needed to make any choice at all?

What point, anymore, will be my inalienable rights?

Capitalism will, in order to control the populace, collapse. Just like it does during wartime. Once our industry can no longer make little kings of us, we'll be back at building pyramids. The great equation...

If stuff is your achievement, there can be no equality; and you will leave behind no free will.

Comments:

Hey - sorry for the delay. I am VERY happy you appreciated this. This is the most important thing for me on LJ, or if I can make someone smile or laugh. This "theme post" was a bit clunky due to illness but I least I got it out. Thanks again!